Friday, January 9, 2009

About Fantasia. And YouTube. But mostly Fantasia.

Did you watch Fantasia as a child? I loved it - most of it. Night On Bald Mountain scared the crap out of me, the Sorcerer's Apprentice was lame even to my five-year old self, and a few were just plain boring.

But the centaurs? And the fairies? And the unicorns and satyrs and dancing flowers and the pegasus'? Oh my. That was bliss for my five-year old self.

So when Matt came across The Sorcerer's Apprentice on YouTube the other day when he was trying to find Lambert the Sheepish Lion for the girls, and it scared Hannah, I went looking for the fun, magical ones.

I found three and five minute segments here and there that showed centaurs, pegasus, and dancing fairies. I also found plenty of very edited Fantasia scenes that should have had 'rated R' posted by the title. There's a reason my kids can't go cruising around YouTube on their own, even when watching 'safe' videos like Fantasia, My Little Pony, Veggie Tales...

But this is what I wanted to show you. A Fantasia that I'd never seen. Embedding isn't allowed on this video, so you'll have to follow the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPKpFNm3QMM

Um... you might not want to watch this with your kids if you don't want to have to explain racism to them quite yet. White people have that privilege - to be able to choose when to discuss racism.

I wasn't sure if it was some fantastic editing or video-shopping (is that a term?). I'm hopelessly behind on stuff like that. Disney officially denies it. Others are calling Disney out on it. But when I was watching it, I was really shocked. Dude, that is so wrong!

Anyway, Matt took Hannah to rent Fantasia (and also Fantasia 2000, which I'd never seen) so that they could watch their favorite ones in their entirety. You know. Their edited entirety.